So Many Stamps, So Little Time

Whether you’re a lifelong collector or just getting started, the National Philatelic Exhibitions (NAPEX) is a great place to indulge your philatelic interests, however varied they may be. This year, the convention is being held from June 1-3 in McLean, Virginia.

Watch a live stamp auction, purchase limited edition philatelic memorabilia, pore over some exquisite collections, listen to world-renowned speakers, and remember why you love stamps! You’ll have the chance to do all of this and so much more at NAPEX.

Are you planning to attend NAPEX this year? Which event are you looking forward to most?

Siege of Yorktown Proves Strength and Determination of Confederate Forces

When we last checked in on the Civil War, the USS Monitor had effectively warded off the CSS Virginia in the famous Battle of the Ironclads in March 1862. Although not an outright victory, Union forces hoped to ride the positive momentum to a quick and victorious end to the war.

In April 1862, General George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac (more than 100,000 troops), led his Union forces down the Chesapeake Bay to the James Peninsula, southeast of Richmond, Virginia. His strategy? Isolate the Confederate capital and win the war. But on April 5, McClellan and his forces unexpectedly met resistance outside Yorktown, where Confederate leaders, anticipating an attack, had erected defensive fortifications. Fooled into believing that Yorktown was held by more than the 11,000 troops actually there, McClellan ordered a siege rather than a full assault.

We believe that McClellan is a gentleman, humane in his sentiments, and has some regard for the usages of civilized warfare; but his declaration months ago that the contest would be a short and desperate one, and his late grandiloquent address to his soldiers, are in striking contrast to his actual performances. We now hear that he declared some ten days ago that Richmond would be in his hands within thirty days. It remains to be seen whether that prediction will be fulfilled. Ten days have already elapsed, and perhaps twenty will pass with no other result than to prove McClellan a false prophet.

That prediction, printed in the Richmond Dispatch on April 7, 1862, proved partially accurate: Though woefully outnumbered, the Confederate forces succeeded in halting the Union advance for a full month before abandoning Yorktown on May 4, 1862.

Digital Color Postmarks (click to order)

This post is one in a continuing series here on Stamp of Approval about the Civil War. In 2011, the U.S. Postal Service launched a stamp series to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the conflict that engulfed the nation from 1861 to 1865. A souvenir sheet of two stamps is being issued through 2015 for each year of the war, and during that time we too will be taking a close look at the events of the war. The 2012 souvenir sheet, which depicts the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Antietam, will be issued on April 24 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The sheets and other Civil War products are now available for preorder online.

Mary Chesnut’s Civil War

Confederate diarist Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823–1913) wrote one of the finest literary and historical works of the Civil War. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, as the collection of her diaries is known, describes life on her plantation in South Carolina and recounts many key events that occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, during the war.

The Civil War: 1862 Commemorative Folio (click to order)

Chesnut provided more than just what the editor of her diaries described as “a vivid picture of a society in the throes of its life-and-death struggle”—because her husband had been a U.S. senator before the war and a Confederate congressman and aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis during the war, Chesnut was in a unique position to witness the events of her day and offer valuable insights to the people and workings of the Confederate government. Her stamp was issued in 1995.